


Love is a Creature That Lives in Your Chest

by AtomicCherryBomb



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Anxiety, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Falling In Love, Fear, Love, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 22:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15592254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicCherryBomb/pseuds/AtomicCherryBomb
Summary: She woke on the floor of the agency, alone and decidedly less hung over than she expected to feel. Without so much as a word she was moving, running again before the Detective could return. Always running, always hiding.





	Love is a Creature That Lives in Your Chest

The irradiated sunlight filtered ever so slightly through the gaps in the tin siding of the Valentine Detective agency. It fell upon the closed eyes of the girl curled upon the floor, head cushioned by a wadded up bit of clothing. 

She stirred quietly, legs stretching as she unfurled like a nested bird from the fetal position upon the floor. Stretching and moving up to prop herself on her arms, peering sleepily around the room. She was wearing nothing but a thin, threadbare shirt that went halfway down her thighs. It was too hot for more than that, the spring heat warming the scorched earth. Her mouth tasted of stale alcohol, a reminder of the false courage that brought her back here. 

Sea green eyes peered up at the empty bed and down the hall at the empty desk. He had been running diagnostics when she entered and without a word she had dutifully curled up on the floor beside him, unwilling to disturb him to satisfy her own drunken drive. At the time, laying down on the floor beside his bed seemed like a good idea, but then again 7 Dirty Wastelanders made anything seem like a good idea. Besides, it was hardly the worst place Nick had seen her fall asleep. The stillness of the air and absence of his presence told her that he had left earlier that morning without a word. Likely as concerned with interrupting her sleep as she had been with interrupting his diagnostics. 

A sinking emptiness unfurled like a blooming flower in her gut, causing her to recoil involuntarily, wrapping her arms around herself. A moment of rest before she was in motion, sliding her vault suit on silently in the early morning light. Latching her armor into place and pushing the sleep shirt and roll of clothes she slept on back into her overstuffed pack. 

The backpack was lifted with a practiced ease settling onto her padded shoulders and lashing around the curve of her hips. Her fingers gently ran over the pillow where the detective had been resting hours earlier. Longing crossed her face unbidden, tooth worrying against her lip, flush coloring her cheeks as she was lost in thought. Her raw emotions bared in her expression in the dim light where no one could witness them. Her exhaustion and slight hang over leaving her normally closed face as an open book here in the dusky air of the office.

Her delicate fingers, calloused with use, clenched tightly and she moved towards the door with heavy feet. She reached to fluidly snag a water bottle she had left near the end of the bed. Tugging in her heart tried to pull her back to his bed like a tether, twisting and slithering like a snake in her chest. Each step felt like it weighed more, like walking through deep molasses. Even the smooth, soothing water down her parched throat did nothing to take her mind from it. She said a silent thank you to her drunk self for consuming so much water before falling asleep.

She paused as she saw her name written on a folded piece of paper in the detectives neat handwriting on Ellie’s desk. A beam of light filled with swirly dust and particles lighting it like a beacon. A tentative hand reached out, brushing against the paper and lifting it up to her eyes against her better judgement. She read his careful printing silently. 

_Annabelle,_

__

__

Been a while, hasn’t it? Didn’t want to wake you; interviewing a potential client. Back with breakfast later. 

_-Nick_

A small smile found its way across her grim mouth despite the ever sinking pit in her stomach. Detective Valentine, always thoughtful and painfully kind. Another long swig of water washed the bile from the back of her throat, remnants of the night before or rising in response to the letter? She was unsure. 

One hand dipped into the pocket in her hip pouch that held her sunglasses, sliding them onto her face like a mask to shield her from the harmful world. A preference learned from Deacon. A final look around the small, dusty office of her friend, remembering fearfully how close she had come to confessing her secret to the Synthetic man only hours before. 

A grimace before she reached down, picking up the pen that NIck left beside his letter. Thoughtful hesitation in her rush to evacuate the area before pressing pen to paper and writing him a guilty apology. 

 

_‘Sorry Nick,’_

She stood for an agonizingly long moment, trying to think of a suitable excuse for her quick exit. 

_‘Preston needs help with a settlement. See you soon.’_

Another minute passed as she considered all the things she wished that she could put into words. Things she felt writhing inside her like a bird eager to take flight. It ached against her ribcage, beating out some sort of love letter in morse code, screaming it out into the dawn desperately. The worlds of 1000 poets crashing and receding like the surf against a cliff below her in her mind, roaring and dying off in an endless cycle she had grown familiar with. 

One final pause to take in the office, it’s familiar edges and smells. The smell of leather, cigarettes, old paper and oil with a hint of old cologne. It was comforting. If she could take that smell with her, to keep her safe against the impossible odds of the wasteland, she would in a heartbeat. 

With that she opened the door, closing it softly behind her so that she didn’t wake Ellie. The action felt final, like closing a part of her very being off. She would be back, she was sure of it, but right now was not the best time. It would take time to cage the creature in her chest again and she was not ready to face Nick with it. 

One foot after another she struggled to keep moving into the morning. She took the back way, eager to avoid running into her friend in the market, sliding out of the stadium like a nameless drifter, the struggle within her hidden from the guards that waved and acknowledged her. 

As she passed the edge of the buildings that made up Boston proper and started off into the more sparse wasteland she was no longer certain if the feeling in her chest was the unspoken word she suspected it was or guilt. Her brain racing, unbidden, to analyze it. Shaking the cobwebs from parts of it that she never wanted to touch again. Painful parts of it. 

Eyes flitted to her pipboy, uncertain of where she wanted to go at such an early hour in her haste to run away. It took her only a moment to decide, but that moment felt like an eternity lost in her own mind. Her pace did not falter and she continued on her journey. Running from that thing inside her and from her friend. 

Was she afraid of rejection? To discover that he may not be capable of feeling the things that she could? Or perhaps he could and did not think he was worthy? If she was honest with herself, she was afraid of putting a name to this thing that had taken up residence in her heart and mind. Afraid that there was power in that name and to whisper it, even in the darkest and most private recesses of her mind, would cause it to grow unfettered. Rapidly consuming her and burning her alive from the inside out like a fire. 

As the looming figure of the Starlight Drive-Thru started to appear on the horizon she reached into her pack idley, grabbing a bottle of Whiskey she had liberated from its resting place in an abandoned shack the day before. Delicate fingers removed the cap, swallowing the burning liquid in hopes of extinguishing the overwhelming feeling inside her. 

It worked. The bitter liquid calming the building storm inside of her, dulling it against her watchful, critical mind. Satisfying it for now. Silencing the “what if” in her mind. Squelching the guilt at the knowledge that any moment Valentine would find her note, breakfast in hand, to see that she had once again come into his life only to vanish with no true explanation for why she was avoiding him. 

Her legs carried her into the screen, up the stairs one by one, her mind muted to the world around her. This settlement was hers and hers alone. Armed with turrets, the only thing she had done to it beyond her defense was remove the radioactive materials in the water. She came here alone, to let her mind run free of the worries imposed upon her by this post apocalyptic nightmare. Never quite feeling the inspiration to further develop it as a settlement. Enjoying the little slice of wasteland that belongs to only her.

She emerged atop the drive-in screen, setting her pack down beside her and sitting on the patio chair that sat aloft, facing the ruins of Boston. Booted feet slid up, perching on the edge of the screen as she nursed the bottle in her hand. Kissing the neck and drinking from it like a lover. The one lover that she could allow herself to be with. Below her, on the ground that screen sat atop, were the discarded bottles of her former companions, their contents long gone and used to hinder the growth of that thing that lived inside her.

The stale whiskey filled the cavernous void inside of her with a safe kind of warmth. ‘Safe like the smell of that tiny back alley office in Diamond City,’ she thought in the back of her traitorous mind.

Maybe one day she could put a name to these things. Maybe she would show up on the doorstep of the agency, sober and nervous but with that little creature inside her filling every inch of her body with courage and hope. He would smile at her, his lopsided smile and forgive her for avoiding him, offering her a cup of hubflower tea that he kept in the office just for her. She would babble apologies over the steam of the cup, eyes unable to stop flitting to his face, memorizing every crease and tear. 

He would ask her what was wrong and she would smile, the compulsion to stretch her legs and run as far from him as she could would be long gone, drowned out by the song of the thing in her chest. Her lips would spill words of admiration and adoration, confessions and fears and praise for the soul in front of her. All of those things swirling in the back of her head that she was terrified to look at more closely. 

She would listen to the crash of the waves in her mind, beckoning her to jump and without fear she would do just that. Her feet would no longer carry her away from those glowing eyes, but towards them. One day.

For now the familiar buzz of a rye lullaby would ease that feeling inside her to a restful slumber and blur the edges of this harsh and unforgiving world she inhabited.


End file.
